


One Shots of the Royal Family

by Alasdair_you



Category: Original Work
Genre: Abuse, Anal Plug, Anal Sex, Assassins, Breathplay, Caning, Dubious Consent, Established Relationship, Kyler Macy, Lian Glenning, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Royalty, Sex Toys, Spanking, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unhealthy Relationships, mentions of heat, mentions of mpreg, original male character/original male character - Freeform, royal families are weird
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-20
Updated: 2019-01-16
Packaged: 2019-01-20 09:01:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12429468
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alasdair_you/pseuds/Alasdair_you
Summary: These are basically porn without plot pieces that exist inside other things I've written.





	1. Lian/Kyler

I’m a hedonist.

They say the first step to solving a problem is admitting that you have one and although my cousin would have me believe that hedonism is my fatal flaw, he doesn’t know me well enough to make that judgment. Besides, why is enjoying the position I was born into such a terrible thing? If Fox had his way, we’d all be living in spackle huts with straw roofs like commoners so that we can better understand their plight.

I can tell you their plight. They were born with the wrong fucking name. Arguably, so was I, but that doesn’t stop me.

It hasn’t stopped me in the past and it won’t stop me now, despite all of Atara’s best efforts.

They call me the black sheep–the outsider, the outcast…different. Most of the nobles try to cast me as Fox’s grandson and remind me of what an honorable, wonderful person my grandfather was and how I should aspire to live up to that standard. It’s a high standard, you know. The highest. My cousin will achieve it, no doubt, because he’s a prissy over-achiever with a stick up his ass, who has never known real heartache. Emory and Cass have done an excellent job at protecting him from that and that pretty little thing that follows him around is unlikely to ever break him in any sort of way. They stare at each other like their brains have been run through a laundry wheel. Sometimes I expect him to drool.  
Yet…I envy them, in a way. Fox is happy and if there’s one person in this miserable, cursed family that deserves to be happy, it’s him. Arguably, he has grown up in the shittiest situation possible. In public, he’s the Queen’s only son and Emory’s heir. They put on a good show. They wave, they smile, they kiss hands. Nobody that isn’t close to the Bordelons ever realizes what’s going on, but inside the palace? In private? 

Ha, in private Fox plays a balancing act between his parents, trying to pay both of them enough attention so that they don’t feel like he’s abandoned them all while tip-toeing around his lunatic father, who hates his apathetic stepfather. The only real stable person that Fox has is Nikita Novak and, by extension, Runa.  
Runa.

I fell in love once, you know? With Runa Novak. People make love out to be this grand adventure, but it’s really not. It’s a coastal squall–torrential downpours, crashing waves…complete and utter destruction. I was stupid to let her in, stupid to think she could ever want something more permanent out of our teenage experiments. The parts of me that weren’t bitter before certainly were in the wake of her disaster. To be fair, she was all I ever knew. Atara kept me from the outside world, too afraid of someone hurting me and turning me into Emory that he mistakenly turned me into something worse.

It was suffocating, growing up trapped in the palace. I took to the arts my father did as hobbies and excelled at them far beyond what he ever did. I stared out the windows, yearning for something more, for a change of scenery. As a teenager, I envied Fox his trips to the market with his father or Nikita. The longer it went on, the larger the rift between Atara and I grew until I launched into full scale rebellion. I did the opposite of everything that he wanted. He despised my relationship with Runa–he insisted that it was my job to carry on the Infinito line, as Fox couldn’t do it himself. As it stands now, I am the only Infinito capable of reproduction and as I have already reproduced, the likelihood of it happening again is slim. I’m curious to see if Fox’s future little ones will come out with marks because of the Lierian lady friend.

And that brings me to my mate, who is currently a writhing mess, but we’ll get to that later.

In a bid to piss off my Lheiro and put Runa officially, permanently behind me, I underwent the rite. There were other motivations, of course…primarily that I don’t think complete assimilation the way that Atara and Cyril promoted is really a possibility. Xenophobia and racial tension runs rampant through Coria. Fox did very little to fix it. Emory’s adamant stance on slavery made it worse, at least on the human side. I took on that tradition in an effort to make myself more appealing to the Lierian masses. We’ve been too disconnected from our people for too long. They deserve better. I aim to give them that. Sure, it meant going through an orgy while drugged out of my mind, but they are my people.  
It worked, because of course it did, and Leland was born with stripes down his cheeks and his spine, the same pale, watery blue that Cyril’s had been. They were the marks indicative of the coastal tribe–a particularly religious and dogmatic group of our people and when their attendant showed up to meet his son…

Well.

Let’s just say that Kyler and I are not what you might call a match made in heaven. Quite the opposite, really. I have no gender preference, but I do have a type and that type is not…Kyler. If I’m going to fuck a woman, I want her to be female shaped–curvy, voluptuous, even. I’m a sucker for tits and ass. If I’m going to fuck a man, he better goddamn well feel and look like an adult man. I want the scrape of stubble on my thighs, callous roughened fingers, and enough muscle to engage in a power struggle with me.

What I got was a fresh faced boy, barely sixteen-years-old, who could easily be mistaken for a twelve-year-old girl. His cheeks are round. Even now, at eighteen, they haven’t lost their childish pudge. His mouth never grew out of a lush, pink Cupid’s bow. His eyes are too big for his face. His skin is too smooth for an adult, from head to toe, and he behaves in such an adorable, kittenish manner that I’m never sure if I want to wrap him up in soft, quilted blankets and tuck him into our son’s toddler sized bed or if I want to beat him and fuck him until his legs turn to jelly and he’s incapable of coherent speech.

I usually choose the latter, in case you were wondering. I like to see him strung out. In fact, it’s about the only time I like to see him. I have a dozen whores that I can see whenever I want, both male and female, human and Lierian, and they’re all much more like what I want to see in a partner. Sometimes I make Kyler watch, just to see those pretty pale eyes well up with tears from frustration because I never let him touch when he has to watch. 

To men that like their boys fragile and androgynous, Kyler is fucking gorgeous. I know that. He makes delightful, sinful sounds and he is obedient to a fault. He really believes that bullshit about me being a living god. He thinks his purpose in life is to serve me, unwaveringly, in whatever capacity I think he should serve and that blind obedience pisses me off. Sometimes I punish him for it. Sometimes I punish him just because I like to hear him squeal, ass in the air, face buried in the silk sheets of our bed, sobbing so hard his entire body trembles, his thighs and ass quivering around the silver plated wooden cock I like to bury in him.

I’m sure he imagined our relationship would be quite…different. He probably thought I would like him...everyone else does. He’s sweet, but sweet only makes me want to hurt him more. He has these washed out, amber colored irises–if he were human, his eyes would be brown, I think, but with the lack of pigment in our people it makes him look like a little glass doll with tiny glass eyes. He’s not the only one disappointed in our union. I wanted so much more from him…someone who could be my equal, at least. A man that actually, you know, feels like a man. If I want to fuck a girl, I’ll fuck a girl. She’s got a bonus pair of tits and another hole to play with. Kyler’s like a toy that wasn’t built quite right, but I’m stuck with it, so I use it anyway lest it gather dust on my shelves.

Currently, I have him face down on the bed. I can’t even recall why I’m irritated with him. He’s breathing, probably. Everything about him makes me want to hurt him. He’s so fucking vulnerable and pathetic, whimpering into the sheets, a puddle of tears under his cherubic little face. His tiny fists are tight, bunched up in the silk and his knees are spread wide so that his ass is up and cherry red, striped from a cane with welts that have prickled scarlet with blood and turned blue around the edges. 

“This is how I like you best,” I tell him conversationally, striking him again so that the cane hits both of his ass cheeks and the wooden phallus protruding from his body. He shrieks into the bed, wailing like a beaten animal–that’s what he is, really. 

Sometimes, I’d like to put a collar on him and walk him around on a leash, but even I know that’s crossing a line so I just play the fantasy in my head when I make him crawl toward me on the rare occasions that I even let him approach me. When I want Kyler, I typically grab a fistful of his platinum blond hair and drag him to the bedroom, tearing at his clothes along the way. He knows better than to fight. He always has. I’m the Infinito. He was picked by our ancestors to be my mate. We’re supposed to be like this. He’s supposed to take whatever I want to give to him and be grateful for it.

So he does, precious thing, and that dogmatic zealotry only fuels the fire in my belly that yearns to hear him scream in a delightful mix of agony and pleasure. Mostly agony, though. I don’t really care if he enjoys it or not. He’s my plaything. Eventually, I suspect I’ll take it too far and actually hurt him or worse, kill him.  
What’s really sickening about that is that the reality of it doesn’t frighten me the way that it should. If he’s stupid enough to believe in all this god bullshit, I’m going to take advantage and turn him into a warm hole that can’t think for himself.

I run the tip of the cane along the crease of his thighs while he trembles and sobs. His little body sort of rocks, trying to get more friction from that cock in his ass and I push it lightly with two fingers just to hear the breathy, aching little sigh that escapes his lips right before I run my nails down his welted backside. He cries out, clawing at the bed, back arched, feet curled in something between bliss and torment. "Does this hurt you?“ I implore, leaning down next to him to lick the salty tears from his angelic cheeks.

He whimpers, his lower lip trembling, and his long, dark eyelashes fall against his face, glittering drops of moisture clinging to the ends. When he doesn’t answer fast enough, I slap him. It’s hard enough to leave a red print on his face, but not hard enough to bruise him, and he jolts back to reality, sucking in a shuddering breath while he stares up at me. "Yes,” he answers mournfully. He even nods with it, like saying it in two ways will please me more. "It hurts me, enethera.“ His common speech is still peppered with Lierian words and he uses the one they use in prayers to their past gods when he speaks about me.

It feeds my ego, which really only makes things worse for him, but I glow a bit at it. "Good,” I answer cheerfully, grabbing the back of his head and hauling him up into a kneeling position. He gasps sharply, his mouth falling open as the toy inside of him shifts and rubs in that maddening spot he’s been trying to reach. I nuzzle his throat and he coos into it, but it’s only to lure him into a false sense of security. I like to play with him…to make him believe it’s almost over and then to plunge him into something even worse, something that makes him howl so loudly that the pictures on the walls shake. I’m glad I don’t live in the palace anymore…that I moved into Cyril’s estate outside the city. I don’t need people hearing what I do to him.

“Fuck yourself on it like a good toy, Kyler,” I croon, licking up to his ear. He obeys immediately, whimpering and sobbing, trying to cling to me like I’ll hold him while he comes but I only reach down and grasp his cock, which is proportionally tiny to the rest of his little body. The kid might as well be female, really. He’s got nothing going for him but an adorable factor. He’d fetch the highest price on the Idra’s Vale slave market and I can easily imagine him in a collar, strapped down and fucked by a whole host of people at some alchemist’s party.  
It’s a good look for him.

I squeeze until he screams, his fingers turning into claws. He thrashes in my arms, begging in his native language for me to stop, but it only encourages me to squeeze harder until he’s in too much pain to do much more than choke on his own breath. Seeing him like this gets me hard. It’s the only thing about him that gets me hard. I only let up when the wretched little thing in my hand has turned purple instead of red and he can’t even get air in anymore, so his face is the same puce color.

He gasps for breath, clawing at his throat when I release him, his legs spread wide and awkwardly. He’s trained well enough to know that if he stops the movement of his hips, I’ll beat him harder and longer though, so he doesn’t stop. He keeps right on fucking himself like the filthy little slut that he is.

I thumb his tears away with mock gentleness and lick them off of my thumb. "Good boy,“ I whisper, kissing the top of his head. "Now you know, that’s only a small taste of what I’ll do to you if you come without permission, Kyler. I’ll get another one of those toys and you can fuck both of them like the vile little whore that you are. All fucking night. Do you understand me?”  
He nods, heaving for breath, red faced and terrified of that outcome. He’s still hard though. He may sob and scream and shriek and beg, but he never goes flaccid. He likes this.

I draw the curtains around the four-poster and leave him there. I don’t even have to bind him anymore. I caught him once giving himself a break when I told him not to and what I’d done to him afterward is probably too heinous for written word. He has never done it again. He never will, because he knows that a second offense would require an even greater punishment.  
I call for the staff and have them fill the brass tub in our bedroom with hot water. I like to watch them work, knowing that behind the curtain, he’s biting his bottom lip bloody trying to stay quiet and do as he’s been told. Poor, pitiful little thing. It would have been in his best interest to run away the moment he met me. He could have had anyone he wanted, really. Lots of the men that frequent the whorehouses like youthful, innocent little boys like Kyler that mewl like kittens when you slide a cock into their asses or their mouths.

With the tub full of steaming water, I strip and peel the curtain back. He’s still there, gyrating on that toy like a cat in heat. He’s red faced, sweaty, bruised, striped, and beautiful. There’s a bit of scarlet on his lip when he looks up at me, his pretty face pleading for some kind of mercy. He wants to come so bad that you can see it in his eyes. His pupils are wide and his lips are parted delicately around pearly teeth and a tiny pink tongue. His cock is straight up, red and angry looking, leaking all over his sweat-slicked belly. His cheeks are streaked red and swollen from tears.

“Tell me, pet, are you still hurting?”

“Yes!” It’s a gasp, breathy and hoarse and I sit down next to him, cupping his face almost tenderly while he whimpers at the sudden change in the weight distribution of the mattress.  
He never stops though. Kyler is as obedient as a paddock bred slave. He has been raised for this. He comes from a dogmatic, hyper-religious sect of our people. I imagine I could order him to cut his own throat and he would probably do it without question. His faith is a beautiful disaster and I aim to destroy it…to destroy him, so utterly and completely that none but me will ever be able to please him.

I lean forward and kiss his bowed lips while he struggles to breathe against the urge to climax. He does not kiss back. All of his energy and attention is dedicated to that one task. His forehead furrows in concentration and I drag my index finger from the hollow of his throat up to the curve of his chin. "Stop, Kyler,“ I command quietly and he does. Immediately, eyes wide, like he’s absolutely horrified at the idea that I won’t let him come. It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve gotten him to this point and then made him get on his knees and suck me off before I sat him on the stool in the corner and made him sit until his cock went flaccid. Not today though, not that it stops me from taunting. "Do you think you deserve to finish?”

“I–” he stammers, balling up his fists at his abdomen. He’s trying to think–to remember if he has pissed me off today. The fact that he’s alive pisses me off. How pretty he is pisses me off. The fact that, at one point I was so doped up on Lierian hallucinogens and in heat, that I let this tiny, precious, naive little boy top me pisses me off. "I-I th-think so. Do I?“

I pretend to put thought into it and then gesture to my knees. "Bend over my lap, pet.”

He falls over me effortlessly, his little ass with that toy still protruding from it sticking up over one of my legs. He’s welted, bruised so deep it’s black in some places, and slick with oil down to his knees. I swat his backside a few times, earning a keening, pathetic wail from him as his body jerks in my lap, his cock against my leg, leaking and hot. Then I twist the wooden prick buried inside him, rubbing against every spot I know that makes him ache and he mewls and arches, breathless and needy, until I slide it out of him with a delicious ‘pop’ noise.

Kyler exhales loudly, his legs quivering, and I swat him again. "Get up,“ I order and he scrambles, wobbling on unsteady legs, his entire body shaking like a leaf. "Get in the tub.”  
He toddles, aching and hard, and winces when he has to step into the water. He sort of folds himself into the far end when I sink in with him, trembling and wide eyed like a kicked puppy. For a moment, all he does is stare at me, his lips wet and his face flushed, and I raise an eyebrow. "You know better, Kyler.“

He’s quick to move at the displeasure in my voice and settles himself in my lap after a moment. It’s not the first time I’ve bathed him. I always take care of him when we’re finished like this. That’s important. If I don’t take care of the toys I like to play with, they’ll end up broken and I do so love playing with Kyler. He’s my favorite and he’s so readily available. I can roll over in the middle of the night, decide I want to fuck, and lift his hips. I can be fucking him before he’s even awake and he’ll howl and twist and shriek for a moment at the dry intrusion, but he’ll take it. Eventually, he even enjoys it.

I have no intention of bathing him. I have a singular idea about this water and I part his slender thighs quickly, grasp his cock, and start pumping hard. 

Kyler throws his head back onto my shoulder and moans like a well-trained whore. His back arches, his fingers wrap tightly around the edges of the tub for but a moment before one comes up and tangles in the back of my hair. "Lian!” he whimpers and he tries to angle his neck so that he’s looking at me but I refuse to make contact with those lovely amber eyes. His hips roll and I can feel my cock between his ass cheeks. I wonder for a moment if he’s begging me to fuck him or if he’s begging me to let him come. I don’t really care, and so I don’t ask. I just angle my hips so that I can slam up into him.

He shrieks, eyes wide, surprised by the unannounced intrusion. This isn’t going to take long. It never does with him and I have a specific plan in mind–one we’ve never actually done. For a few minutes, I fuck him like that–hard and fast at an upward angle, driving into his lithe little body over and over again while he writhes against me, gasping and mewling. He tries to speak a few times but nothing coherent comes out. His eyes roll. I swear to the gods, he’s on the verge of fucking drooling.

I run my free hand up his body and it wraps snugly against his throat. Choking isn’t new. Fuck, I choked him until his lips turned blue the first time I fucked him. He’s used to this. "This is what you were made for, isn’t it?“ I hiss against his ear, taking it between my teeth and tugging rather brutally.

Kyler yelps and thrashes against me for a moment, his eyes welling up over the sudden, sharp pain. He doesn’t answer and I squeeze my hand around his throat, giving him a violent shake while his teeth rattle. "Answer me.”

“Y-yes!” he manages, practically squealing the word and as soon as it exits his mouth, I pitch him forward and he plunges into the water. The steam rises up over the surface while I adjust him, pull him up for one gasp of air, and then force him down to the bottom until his face is pinned against the brass. This is new, but gods is it hot to watch his fingers grip the sides of the tub while I hold him down and pound into him. He’s hot and tight–I never put too much into him, never get toys that are too big because I want him to stay that way…like a precious little slut I get to keep penned up in my bed or trapped in my tub.

For the first little stretch of time, he’s still. He always is when I choke him. This is still air deprivation but the longer he’s down there, the more panicked he gets. He starts to thrash wildly, clawing at the edge of the tub, his platinum hair in a halo around the back of his head. Water sloshes over the side and onto the carpet and despite his paranoia, he still moves his hips against mine while I fuck him. The harder he fights, the harder I pound into his tight little body and the longer it goes on, the weaker he becomes until he’s nearly boneless, just panicked fingers trying to reach back and push me away and that bonelessness does it for me. I come hard and he jerks when he feels it fill him because I usually pull out. I like to come on his beautiful little face.

I jerk him upward at the last possible moment and he takes great, gasping, shuddering breaths so loud they probably penetrate the walls to the other rooms. He fights me for a moment, trying to clamor out of the tub but I keep him pinned, still thrusting into his sensitive, strung out body. I reach around with my other hand and grip his cock in the water, still hard and hot. "Come,“ I order against his ear and he shudders, his eyes rolling back, but his reaction isn’t immediate. I pull his head back by his hair and jerk his cock harder, almost with punishing harshness. "I said come, you little slut, or you’re going back under and I won’t let you up this time. You’re of no use to me if you can’t do what I tell you to fucking do.”

He cries my name. "Lian!“ like a drowned kitten and he comes hard and fast in my palm, shrieking and squirming while I continue to fuck him through every little twitch and convulsion of his overused frame. If I let go of his torso, he’s going back under. He has no strength to hold himself up and his head falls against the rim of the tub, slurring his speech into incoherent babbling while his ass contracts around my cock through his orgasm.

I slide out of him then and I do let him slump into the water. He sinks back under, boneless and limp while I search for a towel and then lift him back out. He’s very near unconscious, but that’s not abnormal for Kyler. Sometimes he even stops breathing for a few seconds. He’s utterly devoted. He knows exactly what he lives and dies for–me, and I like him best well-fucked and tortured.

I scoop him up–he’s feather light, not unlike a child, and deposit him on the silk sheets. He mumbles my name under his breath and then a string of something in his native tongue that’s so mumbly and slurred that I can’t understand it. I give him a light but serious slap on his cheek and his eyes focus for a moment. "If you aren’t going to say something meaningful or suck my prick, keep your fucking mouth shut,” I order stiffly and then fix him with a glare. "Unless you want your throat fucked raw after that? Maybe I can make you sleep with that silver cock in your ass. You’ll be a moaning, whimpering little mess in the morning.“

Kyler shakes his head dolefully and I run my fingers through his wet hair while he shivers in the sheets. "C-cold,” he finally manages to convey and I pull the blanket up over him, kiss his forehead, and lean back. "Thank you.“

"You’re welcome. Do you need anything?”

He shakes his head again, his eyes sliding shut, and I resolve to get dressed and finish the day’s paperwork while he sleeps it off. I have more planned for him later, anyway.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is a freeform style chapter directly following the assault on the beach.
> 
> Tags and Triggers: Abuse, Gore, mentions of sexual assault.

He's choking...and he can't quite remember why. He only knows that there's blood in his mouth, caked into his clothes so that it drips down his limbs and he's sure that it's his but all he sees is the sky above him, stars blinking across a blanket of velvet black as deep and as thick as the stifling heat that threatens to strangle him.

If he doesn't drown first. 

He's limp, a sack of meat and bones in the arms of a man he doesn't know and despite that very stifling heat making sweat drip down his face and back with the blood, he trembles like he's freezing. 

And he reaches, desperate to push back on whoever is holding him, whispering assurances in the dark while the black encroaches on his range of vision. They aren't really assurances though, he notices. They're prayers--something about the gods.

Not him. Anyone but him. I can't afford to lose him.

It makes no sense, really, which Emory finds almost comical because he doesn't know this individual from any other person in the street. Nothing should be comical right now. The pain that radiates out of his skeleton is immeasurable and so enveloping that he's beginning to notice a numbness in his limbs as if his brain has decided that it simply can't process more. He is shutting down, like a derelict machine--a motley mess of bits and pieces that don't really belong to him anymore.

His skin doesn't fit. His bones are disjointed, loose, unreliable. He is no longer welcome inside the sanctuary of his own skull and he can't figure out why because everything prior to being hiked up the beach, cradled like an infant, is beginning to go black. He tries valiantly to recall it, unwilling to let go...determined to remember, to not let any piece of himself slip away into the dark because he's lost too much already watching his people burn for him.

Emory opens his mouth, struggling for words but he's greeted only with a cough, scarlet in color, that spills hot fluid down his lips and his chin. His lungs protest wildly, heaving in his chest, wet and wheezing and he can hear his bones grating with every step but the pain is a distant second to the sudden shut-down of his very memory.

And he doesn't know how, but he can hear Fox above him as he gropes at words beyond the ability of his tongue, which feels rather like he's bitten it in half. His father, ever stoic, is bleached of color like bones left on the beach. He ignores the blood on his face and cups his cheek and something inside of him shrieks against the contact. There is something fresh and appalling about touch, something malignant, cancerous...he tries to thrash away from it but he lacks the ability to move or even speak. Still, he tries. He claws at the wrist, his fingers slipping on flesh, leaving crimson streaks on his father's arm.

He becomes acutely aware that it is his blood and he thinks it's rather peculiar, really, because he can't remember being hurt. He can't remember anything. The heat has turned to cold, the stifling suffocation has become frigid hypothermia.

He is dying. He can taste it on his salt-and-iron tongue that balks against words.

His weight is shifted and the sky fills his vision, a darker, more despicable shade of night than he remembers it ever being and it goes matte black at the edges like cracked, dried paint. It encroaches on the rest of his vision, an infection spreading over his eyes, choking out the light while his heart hammers in his chest so fast it could be humming.

He is terrified and he can't explain why. Fox has never frightened him before. There is no reason for it, but he has no energy left to think on that. He has nothing...nothing but the unconsciousness that intrudes on his senses until the world dulls and his fingers go slack, sagging lifelessly from the wrist they hold.

\---------

Warmth. Silence. Cotton cloth.

Agony.

Emory wants to move, but sleep paralysis and narcotics keep his muscles pinned like he's a butterfly on a board and it all rushes back then. He can feel it in his wrists as if they're pinned above his head again and he can feel every bone snap all over again when he tries to fight, to give them the struggle that they're looking for so that they don't turn their attention to his brother.

His eyes open, mint-green and bloodshot, and his stomach clenches as if he's been punched. He aches in every muscle that he has, in every bone that holds him together, along the very skin that encases his form...he is a mottled patchwork of lacerations, bruises, casts, and bandages. He becomes vaguely aware that his legs are strapped together and that he is holding his breath but he keeps on holding it. He has no real choice. He is a trespasser in his own flesh with no real control over his body.

That has been taken, he realizes, more astonished than he is anything else. He has such confidence, Emory Bordelon. Such presige. Such chaotic, wild, energy that has never been tamed...not until this moment. 

But this wasn't taming, was it? This was destruction. That energy is gone, crushed out of him the way that one crushes juice from grapes. Stomped underfoot, destroyed, ruined.

He's ruined. 

And Atara.

He finally manages to make a noise, to gain some kind of traction over his voice and someone in the room moves. He recognizes the face, but the name is still gone. Blond, blue-grey eyes. A halfling.

"You're awake," he breathes, almost relieved to see it, and a tension dissipates from his shoulders as if he's been carrying a heavy burden by himself. Emory wants to scoff at it. He doesn't know what a burden is, what this thing that has crawled inside of him is...

He wants to claw his chest...hollow it out, rip his heart from the inside and tear it into more pieces. He wants to strip the skin from his form and replace it with something new, something synthetic that can't be harmed or used. He wants to scratch until his face bleeds and his features are indistinguishable because the pain that rips at him from inside his own head is so, so much worse than the physical pain of it.

The healer--for he is that, Emory recognizes the badge on his clothing--has used his voice and it stirs another figure in the room, tall and taut. He recognizes that form in the shadows as a shape he has always associated with safety. He wants to return to that--to the days when this figure, so imposing to everyone else, chased the monsters from his closets and held him through nightmares and bad days alike.

When his father steps out of the shadow and into the light of the crackling fire at the other end of the room, he knows that he cannot go back to that. He knows it in the pity that is written across Fox's face like the bolded titles of chapters in books. It can't be hidden or missed. It is there in the downward curve of his pained grimace and the way he has his arms crossed over his chest like he's trying to hold himself together. He looks at Emory in a way that he never has before. If he were in his right mind, he would have recognized as the grief a parent feels when their child is in pain. It is empathy. Sympathy. Love. A thousand apologies for having not been there to save him.

All Emory sees is the acknowledgment that everything has changed. He has changed.

He shudders involuntarily and opens his mouth to speak but his tongue is as dry as the Corian sand. He chokes on it, sputtering and flinching when the healer holds a glass of cool water to his heated lips. He is running a fever, he realizes. He also notes that he can't hold the cup. He tries to but his hands shake with a sort of palsy that seizes his fingers and won't allow them to bend. It is physical weakness, accompanied by emotional weakness.

He should have stopped them. He's trained. He should have...but he didn't, and it's a weakness. Nobody will ever follow a King that can't even take care of himself.

They share a glance--his father and that healer and the blond straightens his coat when he puts the water down. Emory barely manages to swallow it. His tongue is swollen from teeth that were not his own and his throat is raw from the struggle to breathe.

"Do you..." The healer tries to speak but the solemn, suffocating atmosphere in the room catches his words in his mouth. He looks back at the King, who nods, and presses his index and middle finger to his bottom lip, curling them into his mouth and tugging. There's a furious, angry tick to his motions.

He's the healer from the beach. Emory recognizes his voice when he pulls a chair up beside his bed. The room, he notices, is littered with rolls of bandages, poultices, and surgical tools. He is in...an immense amount of physical pain. He can't move anything below his waist. Every breath feels like broken glass in his chest and his eyes are stinging while his brain claws and shrieks, digging fingers into the sand of his memory, refusing to relive it but it plays over and over again.

The beach. The liquor. Atara.

Running, falling, fighting. Screaming. The agony of it, the way his throat clenched, refusing to vomit at the intrusion. Hands everywhere. Tongues everywhere. Teeth, fists, the furious motion of hips like waves in a storm-tossed sea.

"Do you remember how you got here? Do you remember what happened at the beach?"

The hardening behind Emory's face is all the healer needs to see to know that he does. He still can't speak. His words toss against his teeth, embroiled in a battle with his jaw to escape. The words are prisoners and his jaw is the gatekeeper, clenched shut to keep the noise from escaping his chest but the sounds just build. They gather in his ruined lungs, coming up from his broken body parts like screaming evidence of a natural disaster. He is all cracked fissures and scorched earth--the top about to burst from a volcano, the tremor before the quake, the calm before the tornado.

He is coming apart at the seams like an unraveling doll as the healer speaks. "You must try to keep still," he warns quietly. "I've done everything I can for you, Your Highness, but...your pelvis is broken, some of your fingers are broken, there are lacerations in your mouth. The ribs along your right side are cracked. The internal damage is--" He hesitates, his voice cracking. He has faltered, Emory realizes, because he does not know how to say it. After a moment, all he manages is, "I'm sorry."

And then he gets up and leaves them.

Fox is still, looking down at him like he's a horse with a maimed leg and he's trying to decide what the most humane way of putting him down would be. Emory is trying to use his tongue, trying to find words, trying to express the need to release some of what is happening inside the prison behind his eyes. 

His father approaches carefully and sits beside him on the edge of the bed to his left, careful not to disturb the way he's positioned but he feels it anyway. He feels it in his bones and in his insides. His stomach churns and when his father reaches for him, he balks. His face flinches and his shoulders draw up as if he's been burned. 

Don't touch me, he thinks it to himself. You'll only get yourself as filthy as I am.

He wants to scrub until his skin peels away, until whatever is underneath can be released...like a moth shedding a cocoon. 

He knows that the flinch must hurt his father but he doesn't say anything about it. "Your brother is safe," he finally speaks. It is an assurance that Fox must understand his need for, even with the silence. Emory is grateful for it. Immensely so. A horrifying guilt lifts from his chest, replaced instead with tragic aches. He's writhing on the inside, desperate to mimic it with his actual bones, but his limbs won't move. 

He tries. His arms tremble, pale and bruised the color of ripe blackberries from his thumbs to his elbows. 

It's that visual that finally puts the final crack in his visage. His body shudders again, violently, and nausea rolls in his stomach like an animal trying to escape. The sudden rush of horror is both agonizing and refreshing. It tears down into him like teeth sinking into the very essence of who he is. It rips at the shreds of his heart and shakes it like a dog with a rope, but it gives him enough motivation to push himself up with his left arm.

It is short-lived, that strength, and Fox catches him before he falls back to the mattress, an arm around his back, and the noise that has battered fists against the backs of his teeth finally wins the duel with his jaw.

A sound escapes him that is more dying animal than man, a death throe of a wail that is smothered in Fox's jacket. The physical pain is nothing. It's barely on the outside of his mind then. It's the sensation of his skin trying to crawl off of him that really gets him, it's the out-of-control feeling, the weak feeling, the blame. 

This is his fault. He should have never been there. He deserves this.

He turns his face into Fox's abdomen and his father holds him there, one hand around the back of his sweat-soaked head and the other wrapped around his shoulders. He sort of hunches over him, like he's trying to protect him from it but it's already over. It has already happened. There's nothing left to do.

But the screaming won't stop. It's barely human, more desperate howling than sobbing, and it's tormented.

His fingers move of their own volition. Those that are not in splints curl into claws and he rips at the bandages on his abdomen, digging nails deep into flesh like he can pull it off of his form. He wants to kick his legs, thrash, but his hips won't even move and he has the vague notion that maybe he's paralyzed. It doesn't matter.

He might as well be dead. It would be better that way, surely.

Fox notices just a second later and lets him drop into the pillows in favor of grasping his shoulders and biceps. It's easy for him to pin them down while he shrieks, his shoulders twisting in damp sheets.

"Emory, stop it!" he tries to order, using that oh-so-fatherly voice that would have coaxed him into obeying before. He has no sense now though. There's no thought, no logic, no reasoning with him. 

He feels like he's suffocating. The hands on him are too much and he shakes his head so hard that he bites through his tongue again and the blood puddles in his mouth and runs down his chin when he fights. Fox pleads, his own words turning to desperate, tearful begging but Emory doesn't hear it. He hears the jeering. He doesn't smell his father's cologne, but the sea and liquor. There's no bed, only sand.

"Mack! Goddamit! Emory, look at me! It's me, boss, it's me!"

He doesn't hear the door open, but he sees a figure through tear filled vision and a small, cool hand presses something bitter and soft between his teeth. It melts across his tongue and the reaction is nearly instant. His muscles soften. His form turns boneless. He hiccups and sucks in a choking, heaving breath that strains his lungs. It is loud and alarming. 

The newcomer wipes tears from his face with gentle sweeps of fingertips and as his vision clears, he recognizes Cyril. "You're okay," he promises. "Breathe, sweet. We've got you. We're right here."

And that was the problem, really. They were here and he so desperately wanted to be plummeting over the edge of the balcony.

But his anger is dissipating with the drug. His eyes are growing heavy. He can't even flinch when Cyril kisses his forehead and gets to his feet, moving to the bottom of the bed where Fox has retreated, defeated and horrified.

"Again?" he hears Cyril whisper in the dark.

"Every time he wakes up. It starts all over. Cyril, I--it isn't getting any better."

There is a pause and Emory's eyes slide shut, limbs limp, breathing turning steady. "I won't allow this," he hears Cyril hiss. "I won't lose him now, not after all of this. If he can't fight, then we fight for him. That's our job."

"Our job is to know when to quit, Cyril. Look at him. This is not our son. You need to be prepared to let go." And then a door opens and closes and he can smell honey and limes beside him instead of mint.

A small hand folds in his. "There's no letting go," he tells him sternly. "Not now, Emory."


End file.
